Sermon: End of Academic Year | Choir Valedictory

Preacher:

Chris Hollingshurst

Date:

Sunday 6th July 2025

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

6pm Choral Evensong

May I speak…

Well now - this evening is an occasion to be grateful and to celebrate!  On this last day of the Choir year, we give thanks to God for the ministry of music in this place: for our Canon Liturgist, our Master of Choristers, and all who support them in bringing their gifts, their training, and their experience to bear in order to provide sacred music with so many others here, including our other wonderful organists, lay clerks and choristers.

We are grateful for all those who support this work administratively in the office and in pastoral and safeguarding terms through chaperoning. We also recognise and celebrate this evening the sustained commitment of chorister parents and families without whom we wouldn’t have boys’ and girls’ choirs.

We give thanks for the financial support received from trusts and charitable sources, including the Music Development Foundation here, and – this evening – we are especially pleased to be able to thank our individual Music Patrons, those who have committed to the still very new Music Patrons Scheme.

It’s clear that the music here at the Cathedral involves so many people collaborating in so many different ways, and the installations and valedictions this evening speak witness to ties that bind.

Of course, music in all its forms and contexts can be very powerful. It reflects and responds to the human spirit.  As Aldous Huxley commented: ‘After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music’. And as Beethoven once said, ‘Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life’.

Music also provides the context for wider reflection. As one philosopher said, ‘Music in the soul can be heard by the universe’ – a thought which is inverted in one of the Church’s Eucharistic prayers where the priest declares ‘all your works echo the silent music of your praise’.

This evening’s Bible Old Testament reading is instructive in the use of music particularly in worship. In the cultic practices of Old Testament times, the Ark of the Lord – not a boat but a mobile tabernacle – has come to symbolise the presence of God in the midst of the Israelites.

At a given point, power is passed, not without a struggle, from Israel’s first king, Saul to David who, having been anointed many years earlier by the prophet Samuel, now becomes king initially of Judah and then of all Israel.

The preceding chapters of 1 Chronicles attribute David’s success and new-found power to his obedience and faithfulness to God, in contrast to Saul’s wandering from God and his consulting with mediums. The bringing of the Ark to Jerusalem, the city of David, symbolically declares that the new king’s rule has divine blessing and favour.

The Ark’s journey to Jerusalem is not straightforward. It involves a tragic saga, told in a parallel narrative in 2 Samuel chapter 6, in which a man called Uzzah touches the Ark itself, rather than just the poles used to lift it. As a consequence of his carelessness, he perishes - such is the holiness of the Ark.

And so, for a short period, not least because David is so shaken by this event, the Ark is housed temporarily in the home of Obed-Edom. At the right time, arrangements are made for the last leg of the journey, in which the Ark is accompanied in procession by priests, Levites and musicians (what today we might term as the clergy, servers and choir).

There are some interesting pointers here to the place of music within the wider context of liturgy and worship.

First, for all the beauty and power of good music on its own terms, this episode in 1 Chronicles 15 reminds us that music’s highest setting and calling is in the service and worship of a holy and awesome God. For all its limitless potential, music itself is not the ultimate end.

Secondly, in the setting of worship, music announces, sits within, and draws human hearts towards, the Divine Purpose of love. The music which accompanied the Ark on its journey to Jerusalem will have been very different in form and in sound from the music threaded through this evening’s Cathedral act of worship, but both, offered from the heart, will be pleasing to God.

Thirdly, sacred music, whilst resonating with any number of human conditions, will often lead to rejoicing. Many hymns and anthems that are used here have that effect on congregations. Choral Evensong might not usually be one of them, but there are even some worship contexts in which the music is such that people even begin to dance. 

Indeed, 2 Samuel 6 records that as the Ark is brought into the city, the joyous music gives rise to dancing before the Lord, led by David himself – to the disgust of Saul’s daughter Michal. 

Yet what we in our reserve may think is undignified will sometimes be an expression of the undiluted adoration of God and, as such, is of great worth.

In our second reading, the apostle Paul, writing hundreds of years later to the church in Colossae, locates sacred music at the heart of Christian fellowship and behaviour;

‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,’ he says. ‘Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.’

I don’t imagine Paul means we should come down to breakfast singing ‘Good morning, the Lord be with you. Did you sleep well?’ as if in an English choral chant! Or ‘why did you do that?’ in the intonation of the Jewish Temple. Or ‘I disagree with you about this and that aspect of faith’ in plainsong.

It’s more that speaking and singing the truth together, and with gratitude, builds up the people of God.

For me these words from Colossians always (and I mean always) bring to mind my maternal grandmother – Nana – teaching the pre-school and infant me some simple Christian choruses that articulated Bible verses that I have never forgotten.

As a vicar, I have seen the teaching effect of contemporary kids worship songs on children and parents in parish toddler groups, or on children and teachers in church school assemblies.  And I have heard from adults how, as children, they absorbed sacred meaning by singing in a choir.

I imagine every priest here will have used the twenty-third and other psalms (the earliest worship songs) at the bedside of the sick and dying. Indeed, I have sometimes sung them gently in their simplest hymnic forms when a familiar melody has stirred recognition from the semi-conscious and brought comfort and peace.

So this evening we have a first reading in which musicians have a vital part to play in the community. It’s a reading which illustrates that the highest setting for music is worship, and in which when music is truly worshipful God will be pleased. We have a second reading which says that music is also a vehicle for teaching and strengthening the Church.

Through both readings, we understand that God is glorified, and the lives of God’s people are enriched through music. No wonder, then, that we celebrate with grateful hearts our Cathedral’s music this evening, and we celebrate those who offer it and who lead us into God’s presence week by week.

So to those of you who are leaving us, may God bless you richly in the future. To the rest of you, have a wonderful choir tour, and a great summer break - and we look forward to your return in September. And to you all – thank you, with all our hearts.

Let us pray.

Almighty God,

we thank you for all the gifts you have given us, and especially today for the gift of music

to express that which goes deeper in the human spirit than any words can name.

Help us, through singing, playing, and listening,

to be attuned to the action of your Spirit in our hearts

and to sense what eye has not seen and ear has not heard,

those things that you have prepared for all who love you;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.